The star attraction

Trojka is one of those dependable, neighbourhood restaurants that locals swear by, but which wouldn't normally attract a second glance. It isn't in any of the guides and a search of all newspapers and magazines in the English-speaking world going back ten years produced only six hits.

To put this in context, an identical search concerning the Thai takeaway on the corner of my street produced 16 hits. Trojka is completely off the radar.

Yet because of the neighbourhood it's in, Trojka probably attracts more celebrity customers on an average day than Nobu. That's right, it's in Primrose Hill, the beating heart of London's cocaine-snorting, wife-swapping, front-page-of-the-tabloids set - and when they're not enjoying a two-week stay at The Priory, Trojka is one of their favourite hang-outs.

To give you some idea of just how central it is to the daily lives of these wayward celebrities, Trojka is where Kate Moss's posse assembled for a 'council of war' when the Daily Mirror broke the cocaine story.

So how did it achieve this cult status? Well, for one thing, it's more of a coffee shop than a restaurant so any drug-addled supermodels who pop in at lunchtime don't actually have to eat anything.

Thanks to the vigilance of the local residents, there are no branches of Starbucks in Primrose Hill. Then there's the fact that it's quite ethnic - in this case offering a combination of Russian, Ukrainian and Polish food.

It's also extremely cheap - a factor that shouldn't be underestimated, given how much money this crowd spend on drugs.

To be fair, the food isn't half bad, either. I ventured into this hole-in-the-wall on a Wednesday lunchtime, autograph book at the ready, but the local Dr Feelgood must have been doing his rounds because there were no celebrities in evidence.

The menu is huge - it even includes a kids section just in case the nanny is otherwise disposed. I opted for a starter of borscht - really quite good - and a main course of chicken Kiev that wasn't half bad, either. The breadcrumb coating was wonderfully crispy and, when I cut into it, oil spurted out like blood from a major artery.

I didn't have a syringe full of heroin handy to shove into the hole, so I was forced to soak up the oil with ratatouille. I wouldn't exactly describe it as a gourmet meal, but if I was on the tail end of a three-day coke binge, it would have been just what the doctor ordered. (Not Dr Feelgood - the other kind.)

I wonder what the owners, Jurek Stolarczuk and his wife Sophia, make of their celebrity customers? They weren't around when I visited and when I called repeatedly over the next few days I only managed to reach non-English-speaking waitresses. Could they be in their dacha on the Black Sea?

The Stolarczuks launched Trojka in 1992, hoping to raise the profile of Eastern European cuisine, and they still organise Russian music nights on Friday and Saturday evenings. Somehow, I can't see Kate Moss and Pete Doherty dancing to the balalaika together - though the combination of Bolivian marching powder and bison grass vodka can produce spectacular results.

The restaurant is decorated with a hotchpotch of ethnic bricabrac and the general impression is one of allexpensespared. If it's been given a spring-clean in the past 13 years, you wouldn't know it.

I'll say this for Trojka, though: it's refreshingly untrendy. Clearly, Primrose Hill's too-cool-for-school celebrities wouldn't be seen dead in a place that looked like it was actually trying to attract their custom.

As far as they're concerned, the sort of chichi bistros and coffee shops that have sprung up in Notting Hill over the past few years are strictly for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. They're pretentiously 'unpretentious'.

If I had to sum up Trojka, I'd say it was a cross between a gastropub and a greasy spoon, with a little bit of ethnic fairy dust sprinkled on top. And if it replaced the Thai takeaway at the end of my street, I'd probably have chicken Kiev for lunch every day.